G’Audio Lab, an industry-leading VR audio company, has announced the upgrade of its signature spatial audio solution, Works. Since its launch in early 2017, Works has empowered filmmakers and sound engineering professionals to replicate real-life listening mechanisms and create lifelike listening experiences in virtual reality. With this new upgrade, Works provides creators with an even more intuitive workflow and powerful new features.

Works can (still) be seamlessly added to Pro Tools as an AAX plugin. It allows creators to accurately place object sounds in the virtual environment. Each sound source then has specific positional metadata, which goes through a process called binaural rendering. When content built with Works is played on an HMD, sound objects change according to the users’ interactions, accurately synchronizing what they see with what they hear.

“Audio is finally recognized as a powerful storytelling tool in virtual reality, not just a trivial effect for supporting visuals. The first half of 2017 has proved this — we’ve seen an explosion in cinematic VR and 360 video content incorporating spatial audio and binaural rendering technology.” said Brooklyn Earick, Director of Business Development at G’Audio Lab. “We hope to support the creative minds behind those projects and allow the VR users to immerse even more deeply in the virtual world. Works has taken another huge step in the direction with an even more intuitive UI and powerful new functionality.”

Works continues to support the simultaneous use of three different kinds of audio signals — object (mono), channel, and Ambisonics. The combination of audio signals enables new levels of freedom and intuition for creators create the most realistic sounds possible. Works also adds some powerful new features, like output format monitoring. It lets the creators hear the difference in sound quality between Ambisonics and GA5 while they are working on a project. While there’s no uniform VR audio format, G’Audio’s proprietary format GA5 is known to deliver a superior sense of sound quality and localization. Content creators can decide for themselves which format they want to export their projects in with this side by side comparison.

Works updates like these are expected to facilitate the increased adoption of Sol, the company’s spatial audio renderer SDK, used in conjunction with Works. Spatial audio content (like the output of Works) needs a real-time renderer to reflect the listener’s head orientation and interactive motions — Sol fills that role perfectly.

G’Audio Lab is a spatial audio company dedicated to developing the most immersive and interactive audio solutions for virtual reality. G’Audio’s team of experienced sound experts hold numerous patents and have made key contributions to international audio standardizations. The company’s core binaural rendering technology was adopted as part of the next generation international 3D audio standard MPEG-H 3D Audio. Combining 3D sound with interactivity, G’Audio’s suite of tools, including G’Audio Works, G’Audio Sol and G’Audio Craft, offer interactive 3D sounds and seamless integration for cinematic VR, 360° video, and VR gaming projects.